Open AccessThe relative importance of various job resources for work engagement: A concurrent and follow-up dominance analysis
Author(s) -
Jari Hakanen,
Arnold B. Bakker,
Jarno Turunen
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
business research quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.995
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 2340-9444
pISSN - 2340-9436
DOI - 10.1177/23409444211012419
Subject(s) - job design , work engagement , job analysis , discretion , dominance (genetics) , empowerment , job performance , job attitude , psychology , set (abstract data type) , work (physics) , knowledge management , social psychology , computer science , job satisfaction , economics , political science , engineering , mechanical engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , law , gene , programming language , economic growth
Job resources are known to be key drivers of work engagement, but surprisingly, little is known about the relative importance of specific job resources in comparison to one another. We investigated the relative importance of eight job resources both cross-sectionally and over a 3-year time period. We hypothesized that job resources at the task level are “universally” important and contribute relatively more to work engagement than other types of job resources. We employed dominance analyses to a large cross-sectional data set ( N = 11,468 from 87 organizations), focusing specifically on 11 jobs, and to a two-wave data set ( N = 2,334). Three job resources emerged as the most important both for concurrent and future work engagement across the jobs and samples: skill discretion, job feedback, and team empowerment. Practically, this study suggests that interventions to enhance work engagement could focus on increasing skill discretion and job feedback and on building team empowerment. JEL: L200 Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: General